Zettel

by Ludwig Wittgenstein, Bettina Jobin (Translator)

Zettel, an en face bilingual edition, collects fragments from Wittgenstein's work between 1929 and 1948 on issues of the mind, mathematics & language.
Editor's Preface
Translator's Note
Zettel Text

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Theory, German Literature, Linguistics, Language, Modern

143 pages, Library Binding

First published January 1, 1967

About the author

Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein (Ph.D., Trinity College, Cambridge University, 1929) was an Austrian-British philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language.

Described by Bertrand Russell as "the most perfect example I have ever known of genius as traditionally conceived, passionate, profound, intense, and dominating", he helped inspire two of the twentieth century's principal philosophical movements: the Vienna Circle and Oxford ordinary language philosophy. According to an end of the century poll, professional philosophers in Canada and the U.S. rank both his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and Philosophical Investigations among the top five most important books in twentieth-century philosophy, the latter standing out as "...the one crossover masterpiece in twentieth-century philosophy, appealing across diverse specializations and philosophical orientations". Wittgenstein's influence has been felt in nearly every field of the humanities and social sciences, yet there are widely diverging interpretations of his thought.

Reviews

[Jimmy · Rating 5 out of 5]

A collection of fragments made by Wittgenstein and left by him in a file box. They range in date from about 1929 to 1948, with the greatest number from 1945 to 1948. Great efforts made by Geach, Anscombe, Wright, and Rhees to put this together. Here are some samples:

1. William James: The thought is already complete at the beginning of the sentence. How can one know that?--But the intention
2. I tell someone: "I'm going to whistle you the theme . . . ", it is my intention to whistle it, and I already know what I am going to whistle.

It is my intention to whistle this theme: have I then already, in some sense, whistled it in thought?

32. Imagine someone you know.--Now say who it was.--Sometimes the picture comes first and the name afterwards. But do I guess the name by the picture's likeness to the man?--And if the name only comes after the picture--was the idea of that man there as soon as the picture was, or was it only complete when I had the name? I did not infer the name from the picture; and just for that reason I can say that the idea of him was already there once the picture was there.

34. Imagine humans who from childhood up scribble very fast as they talk: as it were illustrating what they say.

Must I assume that if someone draws or describes or imitates something from memory, he reads off his representation from something or other?!--What supports this?

38. Interrupt a man in quite unpremeditated and fluent talk. Then ask him what he was going to say; and in many cases he will be able to continue the sentence he had begun.--"For that, what he was going to say must already have swum into view before his mind."--Is not that phenomenon perhaps the ground of our saying that the continuation had swum into his mental view?

39. But is it not peculiar that there is such a thing as this reaction, this confession of intention? Is it not an extremely remarkable instrument of language? What is really remarkable about it? Well--it is difficult to imagine how a human being learns this use of words. It is so very subtle.

42. And how does [a child] learn to use the expression "I was just on the point of throwing then"? And how do we tell that he was then really in that state of mind then which I call "being on the point of"?

43. Suppose a human being never learnt the expression "I was on the point of" or "I was just going to . . . " and could not learn their use? A man can after all think a good deal without thinking that. . . .

But isn't it odd that among all the diversity of mankind we do not encounter defective humans of this sort? . . .

45. Intention is neither an emotion, a mood, nor yet a sensation or image. It is not a state of consciousness. It does not have genuine duration

55. Like everything metaphysical the harmony between thought and reality is to be found in the grammar of the language.

61. One may say of the bearer of a name that he does not exist; . . .

69. Socrates to Theaetetus: "If you have an idea, must it not be an idea of something?"--Theaetetus: "Necessarily".--Socrates: "And if you have an idea of something mustn't it be of something real?"--Theaetetus: "It seems so".

73. Some sentences have to be read several times to be understood as sentences.

74. A sentence is given me in code together with the key. Then of course in one way everything required for understanding the sentence has been given me. And yet I should answer the question "Do you understand this sentence?": NO, not yet; I must first decode it. And only when e.g. I had translated it into English would I say "Now I understand it".

84. "Pain is a state of consciousness, understanding is not."--"Well, the thing is, I don't feel my understanding."--But this explanation achieves nothing. Nor would it be any explanation to say: What one in some sense feels is a state of consciousness. For that would only mean: State of consciousness=feeling. (One word would merely have been replaced by another.)

88. It is noteworthy that what goes on in thinking practically never interests us. It is noteworthy, but not queer.

114. One learns the word "think", i.e. its use, under certain circumstances, which, however, one does not learn to describe.

115. But I can teach a person the use of the word! For a description of those circumstances is not needed for that.

116. I just teach him the word under particular circumstances.

117. . . . The question "Do fishes think?" does not exist among our applications of language, . . . .

127. The soul is said to leave the body. Then, in order to exclude any similarity to the body, any sort of idea that some gaseous thing is meant, the soul is said to be incorporeal, non-spatial; but with that word "leave" one has already said it all. . . .

128. I am inclined to speak of a lifeless thing as lacking something. I see life definitely as a plus, as something added to a lifeless thing. . . .

130. We only speak of 'thinking' in quite particular circumstances.

136. Think of putting your hand up in school. Need you have rehearsed the answer silently to yourself, in order to have the right to put your hand up? And what must have gone on inside you?--Nothing need have. But it is important that you usually know an answer when you put your hand up; and that is the criterion for one's understanding of putting one's hand up. . . .

139. We don't get free of the idea that the sense of a sentence accompanies the sentence: is there alongside of it.

144. How words are understood is not told by words alone. (Theology.)

148. We could imagine a language in which the meanings of expressions changed according to definite rules, e.g.: in the morning the expression A means this, in the afternoon it means that.

Or a language in which the individual words altered every day; each day each letter of the previous day would be replaced by the next one in the alphabet (and z by a).

155. A poet's words can pierce us. . . .

156. Is there a difference of meaning that can be explained and another that does not come out in an explanation?

157. Soulful expression in music--this cannot be recognized by rules. Why can't we imagine that it might be, by other beings?

158. If a theme, a phrase, suddenly means something to you, you don't have to be able to explain it. Just this gesture has been made accessible to you.

159. But you do speak of understanding music. You understand it, surely, while you hear it! Ought we to say this is an experience which accompanies the hearing?

160. The way music speaks. Do not forget that a poem, even though it is composed in the language of information, is not used in the language-game of giving information.

161. Mightn't we imagine a man who, never having had any acquaintance with music, comes to us and hears someone playing a reflective piece of Chopin and is convinced that this is a language and people merely want to keep the meaning secret from him?

There is a strongly musical element in verbal language. (A sigh, the intonation of voice in a question, in an announcement, in longing; all the innumerable gestures made with the voice.)

172. Understanding a musical phrase may also be called understanding a language.

185. It's just like the way some people do not understand the question "What colour has the vowel a for you?"--If someone did not understand this, if he were to declare it was nonsense--could we say he did not understand English, or the meaning of the individual words "colour", "vowel" etc.?

199. Suppose someone were to say: "Imagine this butterfly exactly as it is, but ugly instead of beautiful"?!

215. Imagine someone watching the sun and suddenly having the feeling that it is not the sun that moves--but we that move past it. Now he wants to say he has seen a new state of motion that we are in; imagine him showing by gestures which movement he means, and that it is not the sun's movement.--We should here be dealing with two different applications of the word "movement".

216. We see not change of aspect, but change of interpretation.

219. We don't understand Chinese gestures any more than Chinese sentences.

225. "We see emotion."--As opposed to what?--. . . Grief, one would like to say, is personified in the face. . . .

237. It might almost be said: "Meaning moves, whereas a process stands still."

243. Certainly I read a story and don't give a hang about any system of language. I simply read, have impressions, see pictures in my mind's eye, etc. I make the story pass before me like pictures, like a cartoon story. . . .

244. "Sentences serve to describe how things are", we think. The sentence as a picture.

247. For what does it mean "to discover that a sentence does not make sense"?

And what does this mean: "if I mean something by it, surely it must make sense"?

The first presumably means: not to be misled by the appearance of a sentence and to investigate its application in the language-game.

And if I mean something by it"--does that mean something like: "if I can imagine something in connexion with it"?--An image often leads on to a further application.

250. Are roses red in the dark?--One can think of the rose in the dark as red.--

(That one can 'imagine' something does not mean that it makes sense to say it.)

261. The "philosophy of as if" itself rests wholly on this shifting between simile and reality.

267. Is it supposed to be an empirical fact that someone who has had an experience can imagine it, and that someone else can not? (How do I know that a blind man can imagine colours?) But: he cannot play a certain language game (cannot learn it). But is this empirical, or is it the case eo ipso? The latter.

277. I see something in it--like a shape in a puzzle picture. And if I see that, I say "That is all I need."--If you find the sign-post, you don't now look for further instruction--you walk. . . .

281. . . . "Seen from this distance they seem to lie on a straight line."

. . . it would be possible to see [a crooked line] as a bit of a longer line in which the deviations from the straight were lost. I cannot say: "This bit of line looks straight, for it may be a bit of a line that as a whole gives me the impression of being straight." (Mountains on the earth and the moon. The earth a ball.)

322. Language is not defined for us as an arrangement fulfilling a definite purpose. . . .

338. If someone were to say: "Red is complex"--we could not guess what he was alluding to, what he was trying to do with this sentence. But if he says "This chair is complex," we may indeed not know straight off which kind of complexity he is taking about, . . .

353. But may it not be said: "If there were only one substance, there would be no use for the word 'substance'"? . . .

354. I want to say that there is a geometrical gap, not a physical one, between green and red.

373. Concepts other than though akin to ours might seem very queer to us; deviations from the usual in any unusual direction.

374. Concepts with fixed limits would demand a uniformity of behaviour. But where I am certain, someone else is uncertain. And that is a fact of nature.

452. How does it come about that philosophy is so complicated a structure? It surely ought to be completely simple, if it is the ultimate thing, independent of all experience, that you make it out to be.--Philosophy unties knots in our thinking; hence its result must be simple, but philosophising has to be as complicated as the knots it unties.

455. (The philosopher is not a citizen of any community of ideas. That is what makes him into a philosopher.)

456. Some philosophers (or whatever you like to call them) suffer from what may be called "loss of problems". Then everything seems quite simple to them, no deep problems seem to exist any more, the world becomes broad and flat and loses all depth, and what they write becomes immeasurably shallow and trivial. Russell and H. G. Wells suffer from this.

462. (The classifications of philosophers and psychologists: they classify clouds by their shape.)

586. Writing is certainly a voluntary movement, and yet an automatic one. And of course there is no question of a feeling of each movement in writing. One feels something, but could not possibly analyse the feeling. One's hand writes; it does not write because one wills, but one wills what it writes.

One does not watch it in astonishment or with interest while writing; does not think "What will it write now?" But not because one had a wish it should write that. For that it writes what I want might very well throw me into astonishment.

598. What a queer concept 'to attempt', 'to try', is: what can one not 'try to do! . . . But then it might also be said: What a remarkable concept 'doing' is! What are the relations of affinity between 'talking' and 'thinking', between 'speaking' and 'speaking inwardly'? . . .

600. But how do I know that this movement was voluntary?--I don't know this, I manifest it.

601. "I am pulling as hard as I can". How do I know that? Does the feeling in my muscles tell me so? The words are a signal; and they have a function.

605. One of the most dangerous ideas for a philosopher is, oddly enough, that we think with our heads or in our heads.

606. The idea of thinking as a process in the head, in a completely enclosed space, gives him something occult.

670. One can own a mirror; does one then own the reflection that can be seen in it?

691. "The Cretan Liar". He might have written "This proposition is false" instead of "I am lying". The answer would be: "Very well, but which proposition do you mean?"--"Well, this proposition".--"I understand, but which is the proposition mentioned in it?"--"This one"--"Good, and which proposition does it refer to?" and so on. . . . The fundamental error lies in one's thinking that a phrase e.g. "This proposition" can as it were allude to its object (point to it from far off) without having to go proxy for it.

714. A mental illness could be imagined in which one can use and understand a name only in the presence of the bearer.

717. "You can't hear God speak to someone else, you can hear him only if you are being addressed".--That is a grammatical remark.

[H Lamar · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have been studying Wittgenstein for 35 years. Each time I study his works I am always drawn back to Zettel and On Certainty. He created two distinct philosophies of the 20th century with Tractatus Logico (and Notebooks) and Philosophical Investigations (and the Blue and Brown Books). Zettel allows us to lean into his thinking in an almost step by step manner. I cannot imagine Philosophical Investigations, an essential work. without Zettel, On Certainty and Remarks on Philosophy of Psychology. What is important is the question. We question, of course, but how a question is framed allows us to reign in a particular line of thought without bogging down in the margins of an intellectual course of action. There is no 20th century philosophy without Wittgenstein and Heidegger.

[Anastasiia Mozghova · Rating 4 out of 5]

«если бы кому-то довелось заглянуть в твой внутренний мир, смог бы он увидеть там, что ты хотел сказать именно это?»

философ Витгентшейн задает ряд иногда простых, а иногда и обезоруживающих вопросов, и потом сам же дает на них разные варианты ответов. было непросто, но увлекательно и очень-очень интересно.

как по мне, такой сборник заметок - это идеальный формат для знакомства!

[Illiterate · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wittgenstein suggests a set of psychological concepts - meaning, understanding, intending etc - don’t refer to mental states; rather, they are used in relation to action. He also offers related accounts of sensations and emotions.

[TL]

'59. It is difficult for us to shake off this comparison: a man makes his appearance—an event makes its appearance. As if an event even now stood in readiness before the door of reality and were then to make its appearance in reality—like coming into a room.

60. Reality is not a property still missing in what is expected and which accedes to it when one's expectation comes about. Nor is reality like the daylight that things need to acquire colour, when they are already there, as it were colourless, in the dark.'

[Tosh · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Zettel" by Ludwig Wittgenstein is a collection of short writings that were put in a filing cabinet by the author, and later collected by G.E.M. Anscombe and G.H. von Wright. Wittgenstein is probably the most difficult, but yet, enjoyable read for me. As a writer, I often think of him as a role model of sorts. The way he looks at the world is unique, and his thinking of what an image is and what is the thought of that image has a profound effect on me. And again, I may have misread him, and made my own version of Wittgenstein!

I usually re-read his pocket size statements or observations twice. But in the long run, I think it's good to read him straight through, and not worry about getting 'it' on the first try. He's a philosopher where it's best to meditate on his words and the meaning of his sentences through your own dear time. "The limitlessness of the visual field is clearest when we are seeing nothing in complete darkness." That statement stays in my mind the most because I find myself writing in a state of mind that is very much a dark void. I then fill that space with words, that is usually connected to something visual or a sensuality of an object of some sort.

Wittgenstein didn't write a lot. Some of his 'literature' is from his lectures in class. I'm presuming that this book is him working through his philosophy/thoughts. Which is another reason why I love Wittgenstein's work so much is that it's not about the answer, but the journey. He focuses on the senses, and how that communicate to our brain. His writing is not scientific, but almost poetry. In fact, I tend to look at him as a poet than anything else.

[Chant · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'd like to think that Wittgenstein is one of my favorite philosophers and one of the reasons for this is his philosophy of language and more precisely his later philosophy of mind and language (philosophical investigations).

Zettel for me was that something that I needed while I was reading the philosophical investigations, in terms of the philosophy of mind because it brought more depth to his philosophy of mind. I, of course, love Wittgenstein's late philosophy and this is a book I feel is not read as much as say 'On Certainty' or the 'Philosophical Investigations'.

Pick this book up if you want to some further readings of Wittgenstein's later thought and illumination of Wittgenstein's philosophy of mind (I like to emphasise this). (First time finishing on November 24th, 2016).


Much better the second time around! (March 23, 2017)

[Mr Siegal · Rating 5 out of 5]

Philosophy of Mind

Wittgenstein is one of my favourite philosophers. His sheer intellect never ceases to amaze me, and in general, I find everything that I read from him illuminating. Though I am a greater fan of his earlier work (Tractatus), in Zettel one finds a more nuanced thinker who is less brash.

As with many of Wittgenstein’s books, they were never meant to be a book per se, but where different thought which were put together post posthumously. In a sense, you can see this, but in another, one can only marvel at Wittgenstein’s pursuit for knowledge.

This book is generally about the philosophy of mind (and some metaphysics) and talks about a plethora of aspects, ranging from the limits of what we can make sense of up to how we get to make sense of things in general.

Highly recommend.

[Steven H · Rating 5 out of 5]

VARIOUS IDEAS WHICH WITTGENSTEIN COLLECTED IN A BOX

Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein (1889-1951) was an Austrian-British philosopher whose books such as Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and Philosophical Investigations are among the acknowledged “classics” of 20th century philosophy. Born into a wealthy family, he gave all of his inheritance away, served in the Austrian Army during World War I, taught schoolchildren in remote Austrian villages, but ultimately taught at Cambridge for many years.

The Tractatus was the only book he published during his lifetime, but his papers have been posthumously edited, and notes of lectures taken by his students have been transcribed, and have resulted in many published books, such as 'Lectures & Conversations on Aesthetics,' 'Psychology, & Religious Belief,' 'Philosophical Grammar,' 'Philosophical Remarks,' 'The Blue and Brown Books,' 'Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics,' 'Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology,' 'Remarks on Colour,' etc.

The Editor’s Preface states, “We publish here a collection of fragments made by Wittgenstein himself and left by him in a box-file. They were for the most part cut from extensive typescripts of his… Others again were in manuscript, apparently written to add to the remarks on a particular matter preserved in the box. The earliest time of composition… was, so far as we can judge, 1929. The date at which the latest datable fragment was written was August 1948. By far the greatest number came from typescripts which were dictated from 1945-1948.”

He says, “One sometimes says: ‘What was I going to look for in this drawer?---Oh yes, the photograph!’ Once this has occurred to us, we recall the connection between our actions and what was happening before. But the following is also possible: I open the drawer and rattle around in it; at last I come to and ask myself, ‘Why am I rummaging in this drawer?’ And then the answer comes, ‘I want to look at the photograph of…’ ‘I want to,’ not ‘I wanted to.’ Opening the drawer, etc. happened so to speak automatically and got interrupted subsequently.” (§8)

He states, “Guessing thoughts. There are playing-cards on the table. I want the other man to touch one. I shut my eyes and think of one of the cards; the other is supposed to guess which I mean---he makes himself think of a card, and at the same time wills to hit on the one I mean. He touches the card and I say, ‘Yes, that was it.’; or else it wasn’t. A variant of this game would be for me to LOOK at a particular card, but so that the other can’t see the direction of my gaze; he has to guess the card I am looking at… Here it may be important HOW I think of the card, because IT might turn out that the reliability of the guessing depended on that. But if I say in ordinary life: ‘I thought of so-and-so’ I am not asked ‘HOW did you think of him?’”(§35)

He asks, “Why don’t I call cookery rules arbitrary, and why am I tempted to call the rules of grammar arbitrary? Because ‘cookery’ is defined by its end, whereas ‘speaking’ is not. That is why the use of language is in a certain sense autonomous, as cooking and washing are not. You cook badly if you are guided in your cooking by rules other than the right ones; but if you follow other rules than those of chess you are PLAYING ANOTHER GAME; and if you follow grammatical rules other than such-and-such ones, that does not mean you say something wrong, no, you are speaking of something else.” (§320)

He observes, “I have consciousness’---that is a statement about which no doubt is possible.’ Why should that not say the same as: ‘I have consciousness’ is not a proposition’? It might also be said: What’s the harm if someone says that ‘I have consciousness’ is a statement admitting of no doubt? How do I come into conflict with him? Suppose someone were to say this to me---why shouldn’t I get used to making no answer to him instead of starting an argument? Why shouldn’t I treat his words like his whistling or humming? ‘Nothing is so certain as that I possess consciousness.’ In that case, why shouldn’t I let the matter rest? This certainty is not like a mighty force whose point of application does not move, and so no work is accomplished by it.” (§401 & 402)

He points out, “There are for example degrees of pleasure, but it is stupid to speak of a measurement of pleasure. It is true that in certain cases a measurable phenomenon occupies the place previously occupied by a non-measurable one. Then the word designating this place changes its meaning, and its old meaning has become more or less obsolete.” (§438)

He notes, “I have never yet read a comment on the fact that when one shuts one eye and ‘only sees with one eye’ one does not simultaneously see darkness (blackness) with the one that is shut.” (§615)

He says, “Let us imagine a variant of tennis: it is included in the rules of this game that the player has to form such-and-such images as he performs certain moves in the game. (Let the purpose of this rule be to make the game more difficult.) … What sort of move is the inner move of the game, what does it consist in? In this, that---according to the rule---he forms an image of… But might it not also be said: We do not know what kind of inner move of the game he does perform according to the rule; we only know its manifestations… It is important for us to see the DANGERS of the expression ‘inner move of the game’. It is dangerous because it produces confusion.” (§649)

He points out, “Contradiction is to be regarded, not as a catastrophe, but as a wall indicating that we can’t go on here… Why is a contradiction more to be feared than a tautology?” (§687, 689)

He comments: “‘The Cretan Liar’. He might have written ‘This proposition is false’ instead of ‘I am lying.’ The answer would be: ‘Very well, but which proposition do you mean?’ ---‘Well, THIS proposition.’---‘I understand, but which is the proposition mentioned in IT?’---‘THIS one’---‘Good, and which proposition does IT refer to?’ and so on. Thus he would be unable to explain what he means until he passes to a complete proposition.” (§691)

These “notes” [which is basically what “Zettel” means] are illustrative of Wittgenstein’s thought processes while he was philosophizing. They will interest the more “serious” student interested in the development of his thought.

[Raúl Pérez · Rating 5 out of 5]

Life-saving

[mattia · Rating 5 out of 5]

As always when dealing with this Martian: we may understand few things, but the few things we do understand stick with us until the day we die

[BookClubBot]

book_id:165

[Kaidi Pan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Still cracking the damn code.